


Silver for Monsters

by Dracze



Series: Elseworlds [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Horror, Inspired by The Witcher, M/M, Mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22070032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracze/pseuds/Dracze
Summary: The story of Bruce of Gotham, witcher, and his strange travelling companion.A "Witcher"-inspired Batman AU.
Relationships: Joker (DCU)/Bruce Wayne
Series: Elseworlds [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1013289
Comments: 35
Kudos: 112





	Silver for Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure - I wasn't particularly thorough when it comes to the witcher lore. If you're into it, there'll probably be a ton of inaccuracies (for example, the School of the Bat, which doesn't exist in witcher canon but does in my heart). I don't much care - I mostly wanted to play around with the concept and build something like a new sandbox of the bits and pieces (from the games, mostly, but also the books and the show).
> 
> The good news is that you don't need to know anything about the Witcher in order to check out this story, except that witchers are especially mutated and trained monster hunters for hire, and in this story, Bruce is one. Other than that, expect a fairly typical fantasy setting. 
> 
> Currently there's just this one part, but I'm marking it as a multi-chapter 'cause I had a lot of fun writing this one and I've got a ton of ideas for backstories and future developments, so there's a good chance I'll play around with this some more in the future. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy this little bit of fun, and let me know what you think!

The enhancement potions have almost finished working their magic, burning their way through his body. Bruce waits out the worst of it kneeling in the dirt with his eyes closed, his breath measured and steady now, his mind still drifting on the remnants of centering meditation.

Then, the burn settles, and with it comes the tingly, heightened alertness that clears his thoughts into new focus. Bruce opens his eyes and gets to his feet, and then looks up to study the burnt ruin of the windmill in front of him.

Moonlight dusts its edges silver. That’s good. It’ll make whatever’s lurking inside easier to spot. 

Bruce grips the handle of the silver sword, coated generously in spirit oil, and makes his careful way over.

The half-collapsed gate groans with rusty hinges and rotten wood when he forces it open. Overhead, the four tattered, charred windmill blades hang still and quiet, carving up the moonlight and throwing up a checkered shadow over Bruce as he gets near. What little wind there is tonight won’t coax the blades to move, but Bruce’s alerted senses hear them creak, the wood and canvas bearing down with age and neglect. 

This close, the vibrations of his medallion get almost frantic, warning him to stay on his guard. Something foul lies in wait inside, there’s no doubt about that — all he has to do now is determine what it is. The provost who gave Bruce the contract insisted it was a bruxa, but Bruce is skeptical. Bruxae aren’t exactly known to haunt abandoned windmills. If there really is one on the prowl in the area, it wouldn’t stay conveniently put in one place come nighttime.

He didn’t tell the provost any of that. He simply nodded, accepted the contract, and asked around to get as much information as he could from the other villagers. 

What little he heard was… worrying, but it gave Bruce the beginnings of a hypothesis.

Time to see if the provost was right. 

Bruce stalks around the silent structure, soundless feet moving over dirt, potion-enhanced eyes scanning it up and down. He notes the windows, their glass long since broken, and holes with charred edges that must have been the work of the fire. Some are almost large enough for a human smaller than him to slip through. Bruce imagines some poor idiots tried, lured in here by greed, desperation, or both. 

He fully expects to see their bones still rotting inside. 

Eventually, he finds the burnt husk of a door. It gives way easily as he pushes it inward, and he steps into the dusty, mildew-infested darkness, his nostrils flaring up as the stench of rot and decay rushes him from all sides. 

He readjusts his grip on the sword, and presses inside.

Close now. Very close. He can sense the being’s malign presence hanging around the structure, heavy, overbearing and, in its own way, loud to Bruce’s enhanced senses, buzzing like a swarm of flies taken shape. His medallion burns, warning him, but even without it, he would recognize this familiar dissonance anywhere. 

His feet slide over dusty wooden boards as he moves from moonlight to shadow to moonlight again, his eyes keen and alert to the different textures of darkness around him. As he suspected, blood stains the floor and walls — old, dried. There are indeed bones, and as Bruce bends to examine them, the muscles in his face pull tight.

It hadn’t been the fire that killed _those_ people.

He keeps his breathing measured, and shifts his weight with care as he climbs the half-dilapidated steps up to the upper floor.

Something’s here, and it’s watching him.

Then, suddenly, something rustles in the rafters above him. He freezes to listen, but when his eyes follow the noise, he finds nothing there.

That’s when the temperature drops by a good couple degrees, and Bruce’s next breath solidifies into a cloud of chill before it melts away. 

So it’s trying to toy with him.

Fine.

Bruce grips the hilt of the sword in both hands, and shifts across the floor to stand in a large patch of moonlight streaming in through the collapsed part of the roof. His back’s to one of the holes the fire had eaten through, and his eyes search the shadows.

Overhead, a support beam creaks. Bruce glances up.

The wraith attacks.

If Bruce were a normal human man, the apparition would have gutted him. He wouldn’t be able to dodge when it popped into being out of nowhere and struck with a clawed, skeletal arm, going for the heart. But Bruce’s trained, cultivated reflexes, and the potions he took, allow him to duck and swivel out of the way at the last moment, moving just a hair’s breadth faster than the wraith, and he uses the momentum to roll across the floor to the middle of the room, the boards groaning under his weight.

Instantly, he’s back on his feet. He only needs a second to re-center, to prepare. 

The wraith is on him in half that, moving too quickly for Bruce to catch any more of it but a black, oozing blur as it swings for his neck.

He ducks again, more controlled this time, and casts _Yrden_. The runes flare on the dusty floor, forming a circle around the screeching wraith to trap it in its corporeal form.

It doesn’t seem very happy with that. 

Bruce swings his sword to meet its claws just as it lunges for him again, and the blade makes contact, cutting deep into the moonlight-thin illusion of flesh rotting on bare bone.

Bruce lunges again before the creature can retaliate, catching it in the side. It gives out a blood-curdling screech and tries to fly out of the boundaries of the runic circle, off into the shadows — but Bruce doesn’t let it, slashing away at its chosen escape route before it can dematerialize again. 

Caught as it now is in the moonbeam, he can see it, a monstrous, floating corpse wearing a torn, burnt dress, most of its body eaten away by fire to reveal charred bone underneath. It faces Bruce with empty, eyeless sockets, its mouth caught in the death-grimace of bared teeth. A woman, judging by the tatters of the dress, and used to be a wealthy one too; specters of rings glisten at its fingers, and a golden band shines at its neck. Its legs disappear into black mist where it floats above ground, and similar wispy strands hang around the skull in an eerie mockery of hair. 

Bruce studies the apparition, and thinks, Okay. Clearly the provost didn’t tell him the whole truth. 

_A bruxa, my ass._

The wounded wraith tries to float away from the circle again. This time, Bruce isn’t quite fast enough to stop it — it blurs silver and disappears before he can slash at it, and he curses, keeping the sword up. He stays within the runes and keeps their glow alive. He has no delusions that the specter will be kind enough to float within the circle borders on its own, but maybe, if he can lure it back inside… 

Though of course, now that he knows beyond all doubt that it’s wraith, this is all moot. He can’t defeat it for good without first dealing with its body. It’ll just keep coming back, so maybe the best course of action here now is just to leave and —

It’s behind him.

Pain explodes in his back before his muscles can do anything more than tense. The claws didn’t cut through his chainmail, he doesn’t think so, but the force of the blow sends him skittering across the floor, which, all of a sudden, is burning. His next breath goes down stinging with smoke, and when he leaps to his feet again — only just barely dodging another strike — he sees one of the windmill blades beyond burst into flame, a hellish backdrop for the wraith itself, which advances on him in a storm of screeching black fury.

“Who are you?” Bruce tries, parrying its blows with the oiled silver sword. “How did you die? Can you speak? No, wait, I can help, I just need to —”

The wraith _wails_ , and the entire structure groans with it, the rest of the wood catching flame. 

It’s not real. Just the illusion of fire, Bruce knows that. But it feels real enough as it pushes into his nose and throat and stings at his eyes, and as he tries to defend himself from the creature’s onslaught his oversensitized eyes keep trying to blink away nonexistent smoke. 

He has to finish this, and quickly. This creature’s too far gone. He won’t find any help here.

He ducks under one skeletal arm and rolls across the floor to strike at the wraith from behind, hoping to wound it badly enough that it’ll disappear to lick its wounds. 

The wraith is faster. 

It turns, its empty sockets fixed on Bruce, and lashes out with one hand to stop Bruce’s blade mid-swing. The other arm comes up to claw across his face. Bruce manages to turn away just in time to avoid it gouging his eye out, but the claws graze his ear and scalp hard enough to draw blood.

He stumbles back. The floorboards groan.

And collapse under him.

Bruce manages to catch his balance, and the old rotten boards still hold some of his weight, but his right leg’s trapped now, caught in the jagged edges of splintered wood. He holds his sword up in defense as he tries to wrestle it free, swinging — 

The creature catches the blade in its hand again, screeching at the pain of contact with silver and spirit oil but never letting go, and bears down, trying to force Bruce to fall. The wood gives another tortured creak — it won’t hold for much longer. 

Bruce can only hope that the damn thing _will_ give, and soon. Trapped like this he’s as good as a sitting duck, but if he can put enough strain on the floor to collapse it entirely, bring the fight to the ground floor…

The wraith’s spectral, skeletal hand curls around his throat.

Bruce concentrates, staring into its empty sockets. He lets one hand drop from the sword hilt to sketch the _Quen_ sign, but the wraith’s grip tightens. Any second now and it will snap his neck, or quite simply crush it. Bruce’s vision begins to swim. 

_Focus._

His lungs filling with smoke, his air cut short, Bruce tries to sketch the rune again. The wraith cries into his face, opening its maw as if wanting to bite through the skin to his skull. 

Then, there’s something like a thump behind them, and suddenly, the blade of a dagger sticks out from the wraith’s ghoulish chest. 

Bruce blinks furiously as, through the black dots bursting in his vision, he sees another blade join the first one, stabbing at and through the creature time and time again. The wraith turns, more furious than hurt — the blade looks like ordinary steel, so it can’t harm it — but the distraction is enough for it to let go of Bruce. He latches onto the opportunity to draw a desperate breath and yank his sword free, and finally, he manages to wrestle his leg out from the hole in the floor. 

Enough. 

He runs the wraith through much like the daggers did, but this time, the wraith cries out in agony. All of a sudden the fire around them disappears, dying as the illusion loses its hold. 

Bruce doesn’t give the wraith any time to regroup. He jerks the sword out and then strikes again, and again and again and again, hacking away at the wraith’s corporeal form until it explodes into green smoke, to disperse in tendrils of thinning mist into nothing. 

The echo of its screeches throbs in the wood long after the wraith disappears. 

Only when that, too, dies into silence, does Bruce lower the point of his sword — and even then, he only does it by a fraction. 

This isn’t over. 

“Well, now! Was that exciting or what?”

Bruce turns. There’s a figure, tall and slim, face and body hidden by a hooded cloak, standing in the shadows near one of the intact parts of the wall. The voice, high-pitched and lilting though it is, sounds masculine. The intruder is still holding two daggers in their hands, clanging them together now as if they’re _clapping_.

Bruce regards the figure closely, sword and body still at the ready. His eyes can see perfectly in the dark, his ears sensitive to the slightest noise, but he didn’t sense anyone else in the windmill, human or otherwise.

His medallion lies still and silent on his chest, or as still as it can be in a wraith’s dwelling. Not a monster, then. 

Not that that’s in any way reassuring. 

“Who are you?” Bruce demands. “What were you doing here? This place is haunted.”

“You don’t say,” the stranger drawls almost playfully. “Should have thought of that before I decided to bunk here for the night, am I right? That thing woulda made mincemeat out of me!”

They have a strange voice, melodious, stretching some syllables and over-emphasizing consonants, talking too fast and drawling by turns and going from high-pitched and excitable to deeper from one word to the next as though they can’t make up their mind. The daggers spin in their hands, glinting in the moonlight as the stranger tosses and catches them idly, with practiced ease. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Bruce tells them gruffly. 

“You know, you’ve got a funny way of saying thank you,” the stranger complains. “I did just save your life, didn’t I? Don’t they teach you witchers any manners in those ghastly old castles you lot like so much?”

Bruce narrows his eyes. His grip on the hilt tightens. “I didn’t need your help.”

“Um, yes you did? That thing, and wasn’t she just _gorgeous_ by the way, would’ve choked you to death, and look! It nearly mauled your ear. It’s still bleeding, here, want a mirror? It was gonna go all squish —” the stranger gives a choked-up sound, one of their daggers slashing through air — “and your guts would be _all_ over this rancid excuse for a floor a jiffy if I hadn’t, as they say, cut in.”

The stranger giggles, clearly delighted with their own wordplay, and goes back to tossing the daggers in the air like a juggler. Bruce glares at them. The medallion may not be reacting to this intruder, but that doesn’t mean they’re in any way trustworthy.

And anyway, he still has a job to do here. 

“You should leave,” he says. “Now.”

“What’s the hurry? Didn’t you just hack the dazzling lady of the house to tiny ghostly pieces? In rather spectacular style, too, I must say. It reminds me of this song, it’s about an old witcher who went to slay a Noonwraith by the well, it goes like —”

“I didn’t kill the wraith,” Bruce protests before the stranger can actually launch into song. “I merely drove it back. We need to go.”

“Oh.” The stranger pauses, shoulders deflating under the thick cloak. The hands holding the daggers drop as their head starts to move around nervously. “Well, why didn’t you just say so? Let us away!”

Bruce glares, but at least it got the stranger moving, and Bruce is somewhat surprised to see them not bothering with the stairs — they simply elect to drop down through one of the holes in the floor, and after a moment’s hesitation, Bruce follows the same path down. He already knows there’s nothing here on this floor that can help him. 

He takes his time searching the lower levels though, including the cellar, just in case. All he finds for his troubles are more corpses obviously gutted by the wraith, burnt stacks and empty shelves, punctured sacks of flour, more dust, mildew, spiderwebs, and some surviving old barrels, and more evidence of the fire that ravaged this place three years ago. 

He burns and blesses what’s left of the corpses, just to be thorough, but none of them look like they could be the wraith’s own body. And he can’t leave here before he’s sure. So he walks out of the windmill in considerably lower spirits than when he’d entered it, which he supposes is saying something. 

This is gearing up to be a long, long night. 

“What took you so long? Fancied another bout with the old biddy?”

Bruce frowns at the cloaked, hooded person who, as he realizes now, has waited for him by the gate.

“What are you still doing here?” he growls.

The stranger shrugs. “Not like I got anywhere else to go, now, do I? This was supposed to be my quarters for the night. Three and a half stars, no bed or breakfast but the hostess is a stunner and she _will_ try to murder you. Some may consider that a plus.”

“There is a village a quarter of a mile down the road,” Bruce tells them. “They have inns there.”

“Yeah, well.” The stranger shuffles a foot in the dirt, pulling the hood further down over their face in a telling, self-conscious gesture. “Let’s just say that the famed countryside hospitality won’t be extending to me, personally, in this particular neck of the woods, any time soon.”

Ah. The picture is slowly coming together. “And you thought you’d try your luck in a haunted windmill?”

“I didn’t bloody know it was haunted, did I? I was almost asleep when you started flaunting your gorgeous self about the place. If I’d known, I’d have… well.” The stranger laughs, somewhat nervously. “I’d have probably still tried to sleep here, to be quite honest with you.”

“That desperate, huh?”

“We all gotta die of something, master witcher. Being mauled by an angry ghost isn’t the worst way to go, considering some of the more mundane alternatives.”

“It’s still a way to go,” Bruce points out. “A very unnecessary one.”

“Ah, yes. And I’m sure you’d know all about that.”

“Yes,” Bruce says flatly. “Now get out of my way. I’ve got work to do.”

He turns, not bothering to check if the stranger follows his advice, and starts on the slow examination of the fire-touched grounds. He casts out for any traces of what could possibly be a body, using his still-heightened senses and ignoring the sharp sting in his ear. At least now he’s got some indication of how the wraith may have died; all that fire is definitely a clue. 

The question now is… where?

“Whatcha looking for?”

Oh for pity’s sake. Bruce closes his eyes for a moment, counting to three. 

“I told you to get out of my way,” he snaps without turning.

“I know,” the stranger says. “And I ignored you. What are you doing? Maybe I can help.”

Bruce’s first instinct is to snap at them some more, but then he reconsiders. At this point, any nugget of information to get him on the right track might be useful.

“What do you know about that?” he asks, pointing at the windmill. 

“The fire?” the stranger guesses, coming to stand next to Bruce. “Not much. I’m not exactly a local here, just passing through. Much like yourself, master witcher.”

Great. “Then you’ll be of no use to me,” Bruce tells him. “Now get back, I need to —”

“Although,” the stranger cuts in, stretching the syllables dramatically, “I _have_ heard some stories. Here and there. One tends to catch some rather interesting tidbits when people think you’re too drunk to pay attention.” 

Bruce glares at him.

“Okay, okay, I get it. You’re in a hurry,” the stranger says, putting both arms up in a placating gesture. The daggers are gone — all Bruce can see now are a pair of fingerless leather gloves, and two dirty sets of fingers, long and skinny and so pale they look white in the moonlight, and make Bruce’s naturally fair complexion look positively tawny by comparison. 

He focuses on the mouth and chin he can glimpse under the hood — just as unnervingly pale — and the sharp curve of red lips that look like they had to be painted for the color to be this deep and vivid. 

Bruce takes another, closer look at the stranger. The voice does sound masculine — if only just — and Bruce’s medallion still isn’t reacting. But if not for those two things, he could easily assume that maybe the provost had been right after all, and this stranger _is_ the bruxa. 

A part of him still isn’t discounting that as a possibility. 

“Who _are_ you?” he repeats.

“Oh! But of course, how positively callous of me.” The stranger giggles again, the sound high-pitched and tight as though strangled out of him. “Here I am, prattling away, and you’re probably standing here thinking, who the hell is this weirdo, right? I’m sorry, master witcher, it’s just, it’s so _rare_ that I have the pleasure of standing in the presence of someone so distinguished. I’m all a-flutter, see, my hands are shaking! Why, the great Bruce Wayne, Bat of Gotham, the Dark Knight himself, here! In the flesh! Breathing the same air as me! I’m _such_ a fan.”

Bruce frowns. This isn’t the first time he’s been recognized — there are only two trained School of the Bat witchers out in the world at this moment, and his black leathers, armor and spiked gauntlets, to say nothing of his Bat medallion, are dead giveaways to anyone who knows what to look for.

But he wasn’t expecting it in this backwater, and certainly not from some dirty homeless vagabond. All the more reason to stay cautious.

“I know my own name,” Bruce grouses, hiding his surprise. “I asked for yours.”

“Oh yes, yes, yes, of course! I, too, have a number of names, as a matter of fact. Some call me John, some call me Jack, some call me the Pale Man, some call me… well, it’s probably best not to repeat what _some_ call me. Far and wide, though, I’m best known simply as… the Joker.”

He — at this point Bruce feels quite safe thinking of the stranger as a man — sketches a bow, and then pulls his hood down, and grins at Bruce with his face, for once, unobscured.

It’s white. Not just pale, but — _white_ , starker than moonlight itself, and his lips stretch unnaturally wide and deep red, revealing a glistening set of sharp teeth. His eyes are shaded with what looks like coal, and his hair falls loose over his face and looks green, of all things, as though he dipped it in fabric dye. His travelling cloak is torn and muddied and a nondescript grey, but Bruce thinks he can spot hints of vivid color, what looks like green and purple, peeking out from under it. 

“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” the stranger giggles self-consciously, “but I _am_ human. Or at least, I think I am. It’s entirely possible my dear mother, whoever she is, had a bit of a tumble with a vampire, or something else delightful like that. No fangs though, see?” He pulls the corners of his lips back to demonstrate. “Just this striking complexion, and a propensity to burn easily in the sun.”

That seems to be the truth, too. Whatever this strange man is, and whatever the cause for his appearance, he’s not fully supernatural, or Bruce’s medallion would have warned him. 

Bruce studies him for a moment longer, and then asks, “Is that what you want me to call you? Joker?”

“Please. I know it’s strange, but I’m a performer, and —”

Bruce shrugs. “I’ve heard stranger.” He pauses, and asks, “A performer? You mean a bard?”

“Sometimes.” Joker bares his teeth at Bruce in a smile that goes, quite impossibly, wider still. “Sometimes-juggler, sometimes-jester, and a bit of other things, too. Whatever my adoring public requires me to be.”

Right. Would perhaps explain why the villagers ran the guy out of town — they didn’t seem like the kind to appreciate travelling bards. Except that the _a bit of other things, too_ seems to be covering for a whole lot of less savoury possibilities.

Not that Bruce cares. 

“I _am_ in a hurry,” he says. “Tell me what you heard.”

“Oh, not _all_ that much, really.” Joker comes closer, and makes as though he wants to lean on Bruce’s shoulder before he thinks better of it. “I mostly said all that about people talking to get your attention.”

Bruce glares at him. “If you’re only here to waste my time —”

“Wouldn’t dream of it!” Joker laughs, again, and then tilts his head to the side as he looks at Bruce. “You’re looking for the body, right? The thing’s corpse?”

“Get to the point.”

“There’s a tunnel,” Joker says, slyly. “In the cellar, leading out of the windmill. Underground. Does that sound like something that could help?”

Bruce’s heart jumps. He stares at Joker for a moment, and demands, “I’ve been down in the cellar. Didn’t see anything. How do _you_ know about it?”

Joker shrugs. “It’s easy to miss. I’ve done a bit of exploring before I decided where to crash for the night. Checked the cellar, opened the passage by accident. Didn’t go in though — it seemed so ugly and dirty and dark in there, and dank, too, and quite frankly, the smell was horrid. So I said, thanks but no thanks and tried my luck upstairs.”

Bruce’s arm shoots out to close around Joker’s shoulder. “Lead the way,” he orders.

Joker’s grin eases into something almost pleasant, but no less sharp for it. He gives Bruce a nod, and turns. “Right this way, master witcher, sir!”

He starts skipping over the grounds and back towards the windmill. Bruce follows, glancing back up at the still, heavy blades. 

“Out of curiosity, what did they tell _you_ back in the village?” Joker asks as he stops by the gate. “About the fire?”

“That it was an accident,” Bruce mutters. “The old miller died, and his widow took over the business. Did a good job of it for a while. Then, three years ago, a fire broke out. They couldn’t get the miller out in time. She suffocated and died inside. Keep moving.”

“They would tell you that, wouldn’t they.” Joker’s voice carries a dry, bitter note over the smile as he leads the way into the windmill and down to the cellar. “And what a neat little story it is. Except _you_ already know it’s a load of bull droppings, don’t you?”

He skips down the dark steps, light as an elf. Bruce follows more carefully, measuring the way he shifts his weight, mindful of the rotten wood that’s already betrayed him once tonight. He’s considerably heavier than Joker, for one thing, and doesn’t fancy the idea of collapsing their only way out.

“The miller’s remains clearly aren’t inside the windmill proper, so she couldn’t have died here,” he admits. “They didn’t bury her, or the wraith wouldn’t be haunting the place. The story about them not being able to get her out doesn’t hold up.”

“Right! And then there’s the tunnel.”

Bruce glares at the back of Joker’s green head, and mutters, “Providing it’s real.”

“Oh, it’s real alright. A little light? I burned through all my matches, and we don’t _all_ have your glow-in-the-dark eyes. Very fetching, by the way. Lovely color.”

Bruce sighs, and casts around for something he could ignite. 

Eventually, as he searches through the dank, stinking old cellar, he finds a burnt piece of log and a bit of cloth. He winds the cloth around the wood and douses it in oil to make a makeshift torch, lights it up with _Igni_ , and looks at Joker over the sudden, shaky orange glow licking up the old charred walls.

The man’s face appears even sharper, even more unnatural in the unsteady glow — almost demonic, especially when he smiles amid the dancing shadows. Bruce suppresses a jolt of the uncanny and demands, “The tunnel.”

“That was very sexy, by the way.” Joker tells him. “But I’m sure you know all about that. You witchers with your wild libido. Or so people say. Hey, is it true that — ”

“The _tunnel_ ,” Bruce repeats.

Joker giggles and winks at Bruce, and then skips over to the far end of the cellar, where he kneels and pulls out a dusty set of planks.

Bruce steps closer, and the moment he does, the stale, nauseating odor of earth, rot and _death_ hits him in the face so hard he almost stumbles back. 

“After you,” Joker says, grinning up at him from the floor. 

“You’re staying here,” Bruce tells him, kneeling down beside him to examine the narrow drop, which does look like an entrance to a tunnel. “Keep outside. The wraith shouldn’t attack you if you stay off the property.”

“And miss all the fun? I don’t think so. It’s been ages since I had proper material for a new song.”

“What happened to the tunnel being too dirty and stinky for you?” Bruce mutters wryly. 

“Oh, but now it’s an adventure! That makes it all different. Besides, I’ve got you now. You’ll protect me from harm, won’t you?”

“I’m here to work,” Bruce snaps. “You’re just gonna make things harder if you get underfoot.”

“Now that’s just hurtful.” Joker pouts, batting his lashes at Bruce. “I did save your life back there, didn’t I? And I showed you the tunnel. I’m helping plenty, and I can help more! I want to. I’ve wanted to watch you guys at work for _ages_.” 

“On your head be it,” Bruce mutters, because it’s clear now that he won’t be getting rid of this pest easily, and the more time they waste arguing, the higher the chance that the wraith will surprise them down here. “I’m not going to babysit you if this turns dangerous,” he adds. “You know the risk.”

“Risk is my middle name,” Joker tells him, delight in his voice, a spark of something just a bit wild in his eye. “I’ve just decided that now. So? Are we doing this or what?”

Bruce studies him for a bit, then shrugs. 

“Hold this,” he says, giving Joker the torch. 

He grips the silver sword and squeezes himself down into the tunnel.

Instantly, he knows he’s on the right track. The moment he lands on even ground in the dank, stinking darkness, his medallion goes into overdrive, trembling and spinning frantically over his heart. The stench of death is palpable here, all but pushing out everything else. 

Except for smoke. Echoes of it still linger here, etched into the tight tunnel walls, and Bruce can smell it on his fingers as he rubs them over the dirt.

The body must be down here, somewhere. And there’s only one way to go.

“What sort of miller needs a secret tunnel, anyway?” Joker asks, before dropping down ungracefully next to Bruce and nearly dropping the torch. 

“The kind with plenty of enemies,” Bruce tells him. 

He looks over to Joker, and considers only for a moment before making up his mind. 

“Your daggers,” he says. “Put them up.”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” Joker leers, but he does take out his daggers from under his cloak and holds them out to Bruce in one hand. 

Bruce reaches into his own belt for the flask of spirit oil. There isn’t all that much left — he’s gonna have to use the coin from this job to get a fresh supply. 

Still, Joker insisted on tagging along. Might as well make sure he isn’t _entirely_ useless.

“This is spirit oil,” Bruce tells Joker, taking a couple drops and anointing each dagger by turn. “It won’t be as effective on a steel weapon, but better this than nothing. Got anything silver?”

“Oh, sure, let me just whip out my earrings and bracelets and my dear old nana’s necklace while I’m at it. Do I _look_ like someone who carries silver around in his pouch?”

“Best keep close, then.” Bruce takes a moment to study the earthy darkness before them, and squares his shoulders. “This way.”

“Back to my tunnel question,” Joker chatters, keeping close to Bruce as they start down the path into the tunnel. “See, now, a castle, I’d understand. A nobleman’s house, a bank, or a townhouse even. But a windmill? Who cares about some village windmill?”

“This village is small. The people here are poor,” Bruce points out. “Places like these, the millers are some of the richest, most respected people around.”

“You think she built the tunnel, then? The last miller.”

“It’s possible,” Bruce muses. “Plenty of people don’t take kindly to widows taking over their dead husband’s enterprises, rather than stepping aside. Maybe there was pressure to push her out. Maybe she expected sabotage.”

“That fire’s looking less and less like an accident, huh.”

Bruce hesitates, and then says, “The provost told me to expect a bruxa. Either he said it out of ignorance, or…”

“Or he didn’t want to clue you in to what really happened with the miller lady,” Joker supplies easily. “Bit stupid of him, though, isn’t it? Expecting you wouldn’t know the difference.”

“Stupid, or desperate.” 

“Is there a difference?”

“Stay close,” Bruce says. The air is getting chilly again, and his medallion nearly leaps off the chain. 

The wraith must be getting ready to re-emerge. And it probably won’t like it when it realizes where they’re headed.

Bruce sets his jaw, and picks up the pace.

They walk for a bit in tense, watchful silence that Joker can’t seem to help but break by whistling, humming or making insipid remarks about how “cosy” it is to stoop and crawl here and there to squeeze through tighter or partially collapsed spots. Bruce can feel the man’s quick breath at the back of his neck, making the little shorn hair there stand on end, but he does his best to ignore it all, focusing his senses on the tunnel itself. 

They’re close. He can feel it. Not long now.

“So, school of the Bat,” Joker starts in a conversational tone. “What’s it like? Do you witchers have, like… exams, and homework, and all that?”

“Quiet,” Bruce grunts.

“Can’t imagine what that must be like,” Joker prattles on in his tight, lilting, skittish voice, ignoring Bruce. “Do you lot really kidnap kids to make into witchers? Were _you_ kidnapped?”

“I volunteered. Watch your step and shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.” 

“You really from Gotham, then? People say it was levelled to the ground by a monster years ago. Is that what made you take up witchering? Revenge? ‘Cause that sounds incredibly romantic, if you ask me.”

Bruce stops, abruptly, and Joker crashes into his back. 

“You,” Bruce whispers over the tight, vicious heat twisting up in his chest, “need to shut up now. None of this is your business, and I _need_ to concentrate.”

“Sorr- _ee_ ,” Joker drawls. “Hit a nerve, though, didn’t I? Touchy subject. I understand. I mean, I _don’t_ , not really, but if a monster destroyed _my_ home, I’d — ”

Bruce turns, hard and quick, and pins him to the tunnel wall with an elbow across Joker’s throat. 

“You _will_ shut up now,” he growls into Joker’s face, their noses almost touching. “I won’t ask again.”

Joker’s eyes look bright, almost toxic green in the flickering light of the torch. They fix on Bruce’s, and in the warm, orange light, Bruce can see them darkening slowly as his pupils dilate rather than shrink in what _should_ be fear, but… isn’t.

The man’s red, red mouth slants up, and his eyelids drop suggestively. He whispers, “Yes, _sir_ ,” and his voice comes out low — almost sultry.

And that’s… not how this usually plays out. With just those two words, using only his tone and a flirty smile, Joker’s managed to turn what was supposed to be an act of intimidation into something entirely different, and Bruce isn’t prepared for it. Not for the tension thickening the air between them, not for the sudden hyper-awareness of the press of Joker’s slight body against his, and not for the responding surge of inappropriate excitement inside his own body, enhanced the way everything is under the potions and work-adrenaline.

He jerks away and turns his back on Joker, and presses his eyes closed to breathe through the distracting burn of interest. 

He can tell Joker’s interested, too. Genuinely. And that only makes it worse. 

Now is _not_ the time.

“Come on,” he snaps. “We’re getting closer, and we need to hurry. It’s probably sensed where we are.”

Joker giggles again, but the sound is much quieter than before, and he puts a hand over his mouth to stifle it. 

Bruce considers him for a moment, and then sniffs the air, which is quickly turning frosty. 

“She’s awake, and she’s angry,” he judges. “Let’s go. Keep close.”

“Oh, I’ll keep _very_ close, master witcher,” Joker drawls, pressing up playfully against Bruce. “Don’t you worry about that.”

Bruce shakes his head, then steps away from him and starts to walk.

He sets a punishing pace now, almost a jog as far as the tunnel will allow, as his eyes cast about the ground. It’s getting tighter and tighter the further they go, and the stench of death gets stronger by the minute. They must be under the woods now, by Bruce’s estimate, and the exit should be near. So should the body. There’s no way the miller managed to escape to the other side — the stench and his senses tell Bruce otherwise.

And then — 

“Here!” Joker calls, pointing over Bruce’s shoulder.

There she is. Little more than a skeleton now, most of her flesh eaten away by time and worms, but some of the dress still remains, and Bruce recognizes the charred, torn up fabric as the same one the wraith wore. The jewelry gives her away, too — silver and gold rings glisten at skeletal fingers, frozen forever in a desperate gesture of tearing into the ground. 

Bruce frowns, bending over her. Why didn’t she escape? Why couldn’t she climb out, if she got this far? 

The exit must have been right here. Just above the corpse of the woman. The tunnel ends here, and there’s nowhere else to go. Bruce looks up, focusing, and makes out a set of wooden planks up above, exactly over the miller’s bones. 

He passes her, and tries to push.

The door doesn’t budge. 

“There’s something on the other side covering the door,” he realizes with a start. “Something heavy.”

The implications make him sick, and he steps away, glancing to the corpse. 

“Bruce,” Joker’s voice is the quietest it’s been since Bruce met him. He’s kneeling on the floor of the tunnel, shining light on something Bruce can’t see. “Look.”

Cold with it, Bruce makes his way over. 

It’s a second corpse. Old, decomposed to little more than a skeleton much like the miller, its dress tattered and mostly eaten through — and much, much smaller. 

A child.

The miller had a child, a daughter, and they were both trapped down here, choking on smoke, trying to escape the fire that ravaged their entire livelihood. 

And the door had been blocked.

Bruce takes a moment to process this, with all the monstrous implications, and sears the grief for them both into his heart, where it belongs. There’ll be time for anger later. 

He gets to his feet. 

“We need to get them both out,” he says. “They need a proper burial. Quickly, before —”

The temperature drops to ice, there’s a blood-curdling scream, and the wraith lunges at him through the tunnel wall.

Bruce ducks at the last moment, then rolls over the ground, pushing Joker away. The man falls to the ground and drops the torch, which doesn’t go out all at once, but leaves them in dizzying, dancing shadows.

“Stay back!” Bruce tells Joker. “I’ll hold it off.”

“I could —”

But the wraith is upon them in an instant, and Bruce doesn’t have time for him anymore. It’s all he can do to keep slashing at the angry thing to keep it from disemboweling them both in the cramped, tiny space. He concentrates and casts _Yrden_ , and it works enough that he manages to hit and hurt the wraith, but then it escapes and disappears again, leaving them in its chill.

Then, the illusion of flames and smoke explodes all around them, and Bruce grits his teeth. 

Change of plan.

“Go!” he tells Joker. “Get out of here, run! We’ll come back for the bones during the day. It’s too angry now, it’ll be back, we have to —”

The wraith blinks into existence right in front of Joker, blocking his path out. It slashes at his head. 

Bruce manages to push him to the ground just in the nick of time, and then casts and thrusts up blindly with his sword. It lands. The wraith screeches and jerks away, and Bruce gets off of Joker and up to his feet as fast as he can, placing himself in the wraith’s path. 

“Getting a bit hot in here, isn’t it?” Joker wheezes from the ground, over a cough.

“The flames aren’t real,” Bruce says just as the wraith advances on him. “They’re an illusion. Can’t hurt you.”

“You sure about that?” Joker coughs harder, as though choking on smoke. 

“Stay down,” Bruce tells him. “I’ve got this.”

Except, the wraith is trying to back them up to the tunnel wall, and the blocked exit. If Bruce were alone, he could duck under it and sprint down the other side towards the cellar, but that would leave the wraith with Joker.

He could try pulling Joker after him. Trust that the man would keep pace with him. Or —

The wraith strikes, and there’s no time for speculation anymore. 

Bruce concentrates with all he has, and moves with the wraith. He matches it blow for blow, parrying as fast as he can. It keeps attacking blindly, crying its ear-splitting cry, while the illusory flames rage around them, stinging Bruce’s eyes and throat. He can’t see Joker anymore. He can only trust that the idiot is keeping himself out of it, safe as he can be in the cramped tunnel.

He throws up another magic circle, and hurts the wraith as much as he can while it’s trapped in its corporeal form. He swings again, hoping to land the decisive blow —

The wraith ducks and then grabs him by the throat, and crashes his head up into the roof of the tunnel.

Bruce’s eyes go dark for a split second, his thoughts scrambling under the impact. It’s enough. The wraith grips his neck again and throws him towards the far wall, and zips over in a blink, and lifts its splayed, clawed hand to gut him while he’s down.

“Hey, gorgeous!” Joker’s voice calls out from behind them. “Mind if I borrow this?”

The wraith _screams_ as Joker presses a silver ring into the back of her head.

He doesn’t give the wraith the time to disappear. He sticks both his spirit oil-slick daggers into her chest while she wails and writhes, and then picks Bruce’s sword off the ground, and hacks into her, laughing almost loud enough to match the wraith’s cries of agony. 

He then tosses the sword to Bruce, who catches it and advances on the wraith. Joker touches another silver ring into its sizzling body, keeping it put, and Bruce casts _Yrden_ , then makes a clean cut at its ghostly neck.

That does it. The wraith blinks out into a green cloud, taking with it the illusion of fire, and leaving them in near total darkness. 

“Well that was… bracing,” Joker pants, bending over to rest his hands on his knees. “Good workout. Don’t you think so?”

Bruce brushes past him to pick up the torch, which has almost completely gone out. 

“Where did you get the rings?” he asks, quietly, though he already knows the answer. 

“Borrowed them.” Joker shrugs, and points to the miller’s skeleton. “ _She_ wasn’t using them anymore. And there’s a kind of poetic irony in that, don’t you think?” 

“That’s —”

“Practical, I know.” Joker bends down to pick his daggers off the ground. 

“Disrespectful.” 

“Still practical, though.”

“Joker —”

The wraith wails again, somewhere in the far distance from the direction of the cellar, and the tunnel begins to rumble. 

Bruce looks to Joker. Joker looks to Bruce. 

And then, as one, they start to run.

“Can she actually do that?” Joker pants, stumbling in the tight, trembling space. “Can she collapse the tunnel on us?”

“This is her domain,” Bruce tells him sharply. “I’d rather not find out. Faster!”

The rumbling gets louder, and the earth over their heads collapses.

It happens very fast. Too fast for Bruce to quite register what’s happening. All he knows is that one minute, he’s pushing Joker down to the ground with his own body to shield him from the worst of it, and the next, they’re — _rising_ , somehow rising, over the layers and layers of earth that seem to just _open up_ to make way for them, and under him, Joker is breathing hard, and whispering something, something that sounds almost like Eldern, and his hands, they…

They glow.

And then, next thing Bruce knows, they’re up, out of the tunnel with the earth closing up under them again, spitting dirt and earth out of their mouths and gasping for breath on the forest floor.

Bruce rolls off of Joker, landing on his back, and blinks up.

Moonlight dusts the tree crowns above them. The air tastes cold and fresh, without a hint of smoke. And in the distance, once Bruce pushes himself up, he can see the outline of the windmill between the trees, silent and still. 

He looks to Joker, still hacking out dirt on the ground. His hands are no longer glowing, but Bruce remembers it, remembers the toxic-green sheen around them as Joker spoke the words to part the earth for them so it could push them out to safety.

“You,” he whispers. “You’re… you’re a mage?”

Joker looks at him, and his smile looks somewhat resigned, and self-deprecating.

“Wouldn’t go that far,” he whispers in a hoarse, scratchy voice. 

“But you _can_ do magic.”

“Some.” Joker sits up, and shrugs, pushing dirty green hair out of his eyes. “Sometimes. Crisis situations mostly. Nothing too reliable. Don’t spread it around, will you, handsome? Been trying to keep that on the downlow.”

Bruce narrows his eyes. “So you’re untrained?”

“Far as I know, yeah.” Joker shrugs again, and moves to stand up, dusting himself off as he goes. “I don’t exactly remember.”

“How can you not know if you’ve been trained?”

“Bit of a blank, here.” Joker knocks on his own forehead. “I don’t remember much at all from my carefree boyhood, you see. One day I just… woke up a gutter somewhere, no idea how I got there or how old I was, with nothing but the clothes I had on my back, and that’s it.”

“Hmm.” Bruce studies him again, eyes narrowed, because this just doesn’t check out. The mages of Arkham are notorious for kidnapping anyone who shows even a hint of talent — whether the person in question wants to become a magic student or not. They’ve got ways of detecting bursts of power, and unsupervised magic, from a continent away. They should have caught Joker years ago.

… Unless they already have. Unless something happened to make Joker’s memory loss, assuming he’s not lying about that, not entirely incidental.

Maybe it had something to do with his unnatural coloring, too.

Whatever it was, though, it’s not Bruce’s business. 

He gets up, and looks around. 

“Looking for the tunnel exit?” Joker asks. 

“Yes.” Bruce keeps peering into the gloom, searching. “It’s time to end this.”

Joker nods, and then appears to concentrate, closing his eyes, his mouth setting into a thin line. 

“This way,” he says, and takes off through the woods. 

Bruce doesn’t ask him how he knows. His own senses point him in the same direction, and now that he knows Joker has magic, the answer’s obvious. 

He follows Joker through the woods, and listens, but no sound floats their way from the windmill. 

And then — 

“Here,” Bruce says, pushing past Joker. “This is it.”

“They _definitely_ didn’t tell you the whole truth, huh,” Joker whispers, coming to stand next to him.

“No.” Bruce stares down, at the now-collapsed tunnel exit. “They didn’t.”

It was the boulders. Two of them, each one huge and heavy, about as tall as Bruce. Piled over the wooden planks that used to be the door out of the tunnel, and lying haphazardly on the ground now, scattered as the tunnel fell. 

They must have been brought here on purpose. On wagons, too. Into this exact spot, just to block the exit while the fire raged in the windmill. To trap anyone inside the tunnel with no way out.

The miller and her daughter didn’t stand a chance.

“Think the villagers knew about this?” Joker asks, quietly. 

“Maybe they didn’t. Maybe this was planned in secret by someone who wanted to take over the windmill once they got rid of the widow.”

“Do _you_ think it was?”

Bruce doesn’t reply. Which, in itself, is answer enough. 

He kneels in the ground, and starts to dig until he can just about make out the outline of bone. A crushed skull, a scrap of dress. Once he marks the correct spot and digs out enough, he sends an _Igni_ sign to set the remains of the miller and her daughter on fire, and sketches a blessing over them both. 

Joker watches him silently all through it, and then they stand there, side by side, watching as the blessed, magical flames slowly finish what the fire three years ago started.

“Do you believe in it?” Joker asks, quietly. “The burial. The blessing. That kind of thing.”

“My job is to hunt monsters, ghosts, or wraiths. I don’t have the luxury to doubt.”

“Well, yeah. But do you believe that there’s something else waiting for them, now that you’ve dispatched them? Something better?”

Bruce sighs. “I don’t know.”

“You must have some opinions.”

“It works,” Bruce whispers. “That’s the important thing. All I need to know.”

He stays there until the flame eats through the last of the bones. Then, he buries the ashes, and looks up.

It’s dawning.

“I’m getting back to the village,” he says, starting on the road towards the windmill. He glances over his shoulder “You coming?”

“Nah.” Joker shrugs, and smiles almost sheepishly. “I might have cheated a little bit when I sat down to a game of cards with the innkeeper and his friends. They didn’t like that much.”

“Few do.” Bruce smirks. “Thank you for the help, then.”

“I’ll see you around?” Joker looks up at him with something like hope. 

And that’s… odd, in and of itself. It isn’t often that Bruce, or any witcher for that matter, finds anyone who’s eager to stay in their company. 

But then, this is a very odd person. 

Bruce shrugs. 

“Maybe. You’ll stay here, then?”

“Probably. Seems safe enough, now that we’ve vanquished the ghost.” Joker grins, tossing one of his daggers up in the air. “It’s been fun, all in all.”

Bruce decides not to comment on that. 

He turns and makes his slow way out of the forest, leaving Joker, with all of his strange smiles and giggles and magic, behind.

***

The provost is quick to pay him, and quicker still to see Bruce off to the edge of the village. His smiles are nervous and effusive, and so are his thanks, and his eyes shine with impatience to get Bruce on his way, especially when Bruce explains that no, it wasn’t a bruxa, and that he had to bury the corpse of the previous miller to exorcise her angry ghost. 

“Terrible tragedy, of course,” the provost says under Bruce’s careful eye. “We all miss her. She was an exceptional woman. So strong and stubborn and resilient, even after her husband’s death.”

“Stubborn enough to not want to give up her windmill even after her death,” Bruce comments quietly. “Almost as if she thought it was taken from her unfairly.”

“Well, here, a little extra for your trouble,” the provost says quickly, dropping a few more silver coins into Bruce’s hand. “For the… unexpected nature of the encounter. I do believe I can count on your discretion, yes? The village was already so shaken by the fire, I wouldn’t want to re-open old wounds.”

Bruce looks him in the eye when he, slowly, opens his hand and lets the coins drop to the ground. Then, he turns his back on the provost and climbs his horse. 

“By the way,” he says before he leaves for good, “out of curiosity, who’s going to take over the windmill, now that it’s safe to go there again?”

“Well.” The provost looks decidedly uncomfortable now, but he does meet Bruce’s eye. “My son, probably. I’m the cousin of Greta’s late husband. The closest of kin to inherit. The windmill is exceptionally valuable, especially now that it can be repaired. So you see —”

“Yes,” Bruce comments quietly over the hot, vicious flare of anger. “I do.”

He gives the provost another long look, and then adds, “Next time you need to hire a witcher? Make sure it’s not to clean up a mess _you’ve_ made.”

“How dare you,” the provost seethes, but Bruce is already shaking the reins, and galloping out of the village.

He only stops on top of the hill, with the wood and the windmill two distinct spots in the distance.

Joker’s waiting for him there, leaning over a boulder. 

“Didya let them have it?” he asks, pushing his hood out of his face and sauntering onto the road. 

“Here.” Bruce opens the pouch he got from the provost, counts out half the payment, and hands it over to Joker. “Your half.”

Joker grins, and shakes his head. “Honestly, I kinda wish we’d just let the old biddy haunt the place till everyone in the village rots in the ground.”

“They’d only get another witcher to do it,” Bruce muses, “and anyway, at least the miller’s tortures are over. She deserves that much.”

“I suppose. Still a shame, though. I’ve got half a mind to go back there and burn down what’s left of that windmill just so they don’t get to put their paws on it.” 

“There are good people in that village that could really use the income from the windmill, whoever runs it,” Bruce says, but the words taste sour in his mouth even as he says them.

“Are there?” Joker parries. “Wouldn’t be so sure.”

“Take the money,” Bruce insists. “You’ve earned it.”

“Say, where are you headed next? ‘Cause I’m finding myself at a bit of a loose end, and frankly, I could use some company.”

Bruce bites back another smirk. 

“Thinking I should pay the sheriff a visit,” he tells Joker. “Tell him about the tunnel, and what really happened. He might be interested.”

Joker’s answering smirk goes positively lethal. “Not how I’d have dealt with it,” he says, “but good enough, I suppose. And after that?”

“Not sure,” Bruce confesses. “Away from here, for a start. I need to find a market. Get some new supplies.”

“A market! What a fantastic idea. I know _just_ the place.” Joker’s face brightens up instantly, and when Bruce gets his horse to move, he falls into step beside them easily. “You don’t mind me tagging along, do you? It’ll just be for a few days, and I’m just _dying_ to get to know you better. You must have so many stories!”

Bruce eyes him from his perch on the horse, and considers. 

He isn’t exactly thrilled at the idea. He’s used to travelling alone, and in silence, with nothing but his thoughts for company. Prefers it that way. Company exhausts him, especially when it’s someone like Joker, who seems far too bright and loud for his own good. Dangerous, too, sharp and wild in a way Bruce can’t quite explain yet. Probably an outcast, and almost definitely a criminal.

Then again…

They do seem to be headed in the same direction. 

And he _does_ find himself fascinated with the man, just a bit. 

At the very least, it should help pass the time. 

“Lead on,” he tells Joker, who claps delightedly and launches into a dance-like, springy step. 

“ _There once was a witcher, so brave and so strong_ ,” he sings out in his lilting, all-over-the-place voice. “ _They all said, that man, he can do no wrong! Until one morning, which dawned bright and clear, his pants dropped, showing the village his rear!_ ”

Bruce shakes his head, and takes one last lingering glance over his shoulder at the village at the foot of the hill.

Anger grips his throat again as he catches sight of the windmill, and he has to look away before he acts on impulses he’d trained to contain long ago. 

He’s done what he could for the miller and her child. Now he’ll make sure that justice is done. 

The proper way. 

He urges his horse to start moving again, and follows the still-singing Joker down the tract, dropping the money he counted out for Joker back into the pouch. He can give it to him later, once they stop. Or maybe at the market. And then they’ll each go their separate ways, and he’ll be able to put this strange man out of his mind.

Probably.


End file.
